


Boys Will Be Bugs

by GlitterFairy_21225



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Morally Ambiguous Character, Police, Protective Parents, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 20:16:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20494706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlitterFairy_21225/pseuds/GlitterFairy_21225
Summary: No matter what Alex did, Deputy Standall could never get past the boy he found in that bathroom dying from a self-inflicted bullet.





	Boys Will Be Bugs

Fun fact: Police officers are taught to put a lot of pressure on getting an end result during interrogations or confessionals. No police officer was ever going to spend thirteen hours listening to some kid go on and on about how everybody could have been a killer, but wasn't. Sharing irrelevant secret after irrelevant secret.

Bill Standall didn't like this Ani girl very much, but she did offer details about his son's life that Alex was never gonna tell him about. Which she didn't even need to do in order frame Montgomery, but after finding those drugs in Alex's drawer, that girl was a Godsend.

_Alex hired a prostitute with Bryce Walker?_

He didn't even need a confession to know who was the killer. Besides the tire tracks, he was trained in police academy to detect when someone was guilty. And after everything that happened, he was always in tune with Alex's behavior.

At first, he was scared. Alex had come a long way with his mental health, but what if he felt guilty for wanting to do it again?

That was always the thing. Ever since that awful night, thoughts of Alex were always accompanied by images of his son bleeding to death in that damn bathroom floor. It was horrible, and he knew that shouldn't be one of the first things he associates with his child, but he couldn't help it.

He always knew Alex was different from most Standall men. He wasn't one for sports, hated rumbling it up with his dad or brother, and was just so sweet. Bill still didn't know how he could have had a child so sweet. Even as a baby, he needed to be cradled or protected, while his older brother seemed too big to carry around from the day he was born.

At the time, Bill saw it as a weakness. Both on his part for giving in to his need to coddle his son, and Alex, for needing to be coddled in the first place.

Then his son tried to take his own life and Bill realized how stupid that was of him.

He remembered talking to Alex that night, telling him he didn't have to give a testimony for the Baker case, because he knew his son was a good kid, so there was no need. Alex told him later that testifying only would have postponed it, but Bill didn't care. He remembered just.... leaving. Just leaving.

And then almost being out the door when he heard the gunshot. And then rushing upstairs, and finding him in laying in the bathroom and shutting down. Holding him to his chest and waiting for the paramedics. Seeing the gun in his hand and the note on the sink and realizing what had happened. Grabbing the hand still holding his gun and wishing he was the one bleeding to death from a bullet wound if it meant his son could live. But Alex wasn't dead yet so he couldn't.

He promised in his wedding vows that he'd never do or say anything to truly hurt his wife, but he broke that promise when Carolyn walked up to him with confusion and a little concern written all over her beautiful face, and he knew he had to be the one to tell her.

He didn’t get any sleep that night, not when he didn’t know for sure if Alex would live or die. 

When Olivia Baker came with her condolences, and Bill was actually comforted by her presence. She was probably the only person for miles who actually knew what he and Carolyn were going through in that moment. Of course he always felt bad for her in the past weeks, but now they actually had some understanding of each other, even if there was still hope for his son.

Then came her daughter's suicide tapes, she said they might explain a few things, and that she didn't want him to have to hear them at a work environment. He held no grudges against the Bakers and still doesn't, but for a guilty second, he felt angry with Hannah Baker for including his son in them. For bringing his family into her mess and telling his son that he was partially responsible for her death because of a stupid mistake.

When it got to Bryce Walker, he felt sick though. Logically he knew that the police already had the tapes so whatever could be legally done with that evidence was being done. But on the other hand, two young girls were raped by that boy and he actively encouraged Alex to hang out with him.

Things changed after Alex came home. Of course it did, how could it not? Bill was raised to believe that boys would be boys, and they just needed to toughen up, and he raised his boys to believe the same. But if that was the behavior that meant his son didn't feel like he could talk to him about wanting to kill himself, then that would stop.

As many friends on the force pointed out, he went from a strict authoritarian who made his boys call him "sir" to someone who regularly told his son he loved him. Who was just grateful he had his son. He knew the Baker's weren't so lucky. He intended to do everything in his power to make sure his son got better.

It was obvious that recovery wouldn't be easy. He never faced anything like what Alex was facing in high school, and if Peter went through any of this stuff, he sure didn't tell his parents about it.

Alex became friends with Jessica Davis again, who was also taking several months off school, and Bill quickly put two and two together. He figured that if the kid wanted to talk about it, she'd go to an officer on-duty, so he just felt guilty. He pushed Alex to start hanging around young men like Bryce Walker.

The Baker's lost their trial but Bill felt at least a little satisfied after arresting Bryce Walker. He knew he wasn't the only one. Everyone lost a little faith in the justice system when he got off.

Bryce Walker was a rapist.

And Alex Standall was a murderer.

He knew his son killed Bryce Walker. He knew his friend's friend was lying when she said it was that Monty boy. He was a cop who knew all of this and yet he pretended he didn't.

In Bill's defense, Alex's physical health wouldn't get the right treatment in prison. In Bill's defense, prison does horrible things to a person's psyche and inmates without histories of suicidal tendencies have killed themselves. In Bill's defense, every time he closed his eyes, he was in that bathroom and his little boy was laying in a pool of blood with his gun in his hands.

He meant what he said. He wished he was the one with the bullet in his head. Gunshots to the head weren't easy to survive. And Bill was a cynic. Even then, even when all his mind could process was getting Alex to the hospital, there was a little voice in the back of his head reminding him that chances of survival were slim. That chances of his baby surviving was slim. And there was nothing he wanted more than to be the one with with the bullet in his head.

At the end of the day, he was never going to move past that. Alex was a mess who broke laws, did horrible things, and was on drugs, but he was never going to see anything past the sweet kid with a broken mind that Bill refused to see until he broke his body too.

Alex did an evil thing, and instead of making him face the consequences of that evil thing, Bill did an evil thing too.

Nora Walker was something else, but she can not be blamed for loving her son. Nora Walker was something else, but she did what Bill Standall could never do. She knew her son did horrible things, and knew he needed to face the consequences for those actions.

If you told Bill five years ago that he would ever come to a point in his life where he would ever admit that after almost thirty years on the force, some blonde socialite who taught yoga classes was braver than him, he would have laughed. But there he was.

Burning the evidence of his son's guilt.


End file.
